


You've been sleeping with my sweater

by Samcgrath



Series: Half a heart without you [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: And angst, Angst, Drunk Harry, M/M, Please Don't Kill Me, that's all this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samcgrath/pseuds/Samcgrath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people know how to deal with loss, others are like Harry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've been sleeping with my sweater

**Author's Note:**

> As cryptic as the summary sounds, I think it's explanatory. I'm just feeling really down today for some reason and I saw this post on tumblr and so here's angst! This is pretty sad, if I do say so myself. So, yeah. Go forth!

“Sometimes I touch the things you used to touch, looking for echoes of your fingers”— Iain Thomas

 

Darkness wraps everything up beautifully, he can barely make out the form of trees and people on the street. It’s gotten dark, he hadn’t realized. The lamp across the street is burned out and the next one is too far to light up the path. He pushes back slightly from the window sill that he had been leaning on, his back cracking with the movement. It’s been four hours, the clock says. He doesn’t remember.

 

A loud laughter outside breaks the perfect semblance of silence, he can hear voices as footsteps approach closer. He leans forward and sees two figures pass by the window, they seem unaware of his following eyes.

 

“—she didn’t even flinch, just said Susan Boyle with a straight face!”

 

That seems to mean something because the girl throws her head back and starts laughing. She stops walking and brings up her hand to the boy’s arm to stop him too.

 

“Susan Boyle.”

 

She lets out between giggles. And then they start walking again and they are gone.

 

‘Two months ago, I snogged Susan Boyle.’

 

He hears a faint echo of a once familiar voice in his head. The dull throb of pain flares up for a second before settling in his chest comfortably again.

 

He gets up and walks to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of whiskey. It’s his fifth today or seventh, he lost count. The amber liquid sloshes in the glass as he walks back toward the window. It burns down his throat when he raises the glass to his lips. It always burns.

 

Never let anyone tell you that alcohol stops burning when you’ve had a few. It never does. 

 

No matter how many you’ve had, it still burns. And he should know, when he’s spent three months drinking his days away – every morning through every night. He was clutching the toilet last night barfing his lungs out almost, still gripping a half empty glass of whiskey in one hand. He should know.

 

He is looking out again, there is nothing to see but it doesn’t stop him. Tears blur his sight but he only notices when the far off lights on a speeding car seems hazy. He doesn’t reach up to wipe his face – stopped doing that a long time ago. Now, he just lets them dry out. 

 

Louis’ been gone for three months.

 

He doesn’t have to hide his tears from anyone anymore.

 

The phone’s ringing breaks him out of the trance he was in thinking about Louis joking in some confessions video. He ignores it. It must be Niall doing his customary call-in to check if Harry would answer today. 

 

He tops up his glass instead and settles in against the lobby wall, looking out the window again. Thoughts race through his mind as he clutches the glass protectively against his chest and lets the tears fall. He had thought they would stop by now, but they keep coming. 

 

His mind jumps from one happy memory to the next at lightning fast speed and he lets it. He gets up once more to bring the bottle back with him when he sits down at the bottom step, not coherent enough to make his way upstairs. 

 

The cold marble is digging into him as he sits with his back to the wall and closes his eyes momentarily. Images of them running around in hotel lobbys with oranges in hand raid his mind and he snaps his eyes open. This is why he can’t fall asleep.

 

Three months Louis’ been gone and he still can’t close his eyes without seeing him. And every time he wants to pick up a knife and end it. But something stops him.

 

‘Promise me, Harry. You won’t hurt yourself, promise me. You hear me? Don’t you dare! Promise.’

 

He had never replied, just nodded his head dumbly as Louis’ hands gripped his sweater fiercely, getting blood on it. Louis’ blood. He still has the sweater hanging up in his closet. 

 

His head is throbbing, he hasn’t vomited since last night. He should have by now, he thinks. 

 

It’s a routine, he gets up around noon and throws up last night’s alcohol. Then, proceeds to start the day with a neat whiskey and something to eat to keep it down. Drinks his way through days and weeks, barfing at least once through the day. Sometimes he coughs up blood, but it’s okay. It’s not killing him. Not fast enough.

 

The floor below him is spinning as he walks to the bathroom and forces himself to vomit. The face looking back at him in the mirror is a stranger he doesn’t recognise. Louis would be angry if he saw him like this. But he can’t be, and that’s the whole problem. He can’t.

 

Because he is dead. 

 

Ran over by an underage girl. 

 

He’s punching the mirror before he can stop himself, glass bits stick out of his hand and blood is trickling down his knuckles to the while tiles on the floor but he can hardly see it through the tears. He is searching around hysterically for a towel to wipe the blood away, it makes him see Louis in that stretcher over and over again. 

 

He is sliding down the bathroom wall with a towel clutched over his hand, trying to forget Louis’ face as he had looked up at Harry.

 

‘I’m alright, Harry. Look at me, Harry? Haz? Hazza? I’m going to be just fine. I’ll see you at the hospital, love.’

 

Liar.

 

He never made it to the hospital.

 

He is stumbling his way back into the lobby, the bottle seems too far away as he finally sits back down on the stair step. His hand hurts but the bleeding has stopped and he needs to forget so he uncaps the bottle and raises it to his lips. 

 

‘I bring my washing machine with me.’

 

‘And I’d marry you, Harry.’

 

‘Oh sorry, Harry. Sorry.’

 

‘And as for you, stop having curly hair!’

 

‘Hi, love.’

 

He falls asleep with his head cushioned on his arm and the stairs digging into his body. But at least he stops thinking for a while.

 

Until he wakes up to a dark house and convinces himself that it’s all been a dream but when he runs around the house frantically looking for Louis and waiting for him to pop up from somewhere with a wide grin, he finds the house empty.

 

As much as he convinces himself that he can hear Louis calling out to him, he can’t actually. Louis is still gone.

 

‘Come on, Harold. I haven’t got all day.’

 

The voices in his head mock him as he drags himself upstairs and lies down in bed. They don’t stop.

 

‘I love that unruly mop of curls you call hair. Don’t you ever dare cut them!’

 

‘Harry? You up yet? Wake up lazy arse, you said you’d bake me a cake today.’

 

‘Oh, God, Jesus—I’m so close- Harry! Ah. Fuck’

 

‘Why are you angry at me, Hazza? They told me I had to say it. I didn’t mean it, love.’

 

‘I am so fucking gone on you, Haz. You don’t even know.’

 

‘You won’t hurt yourself, promise me. You hear me? Don’t you dare! Promise.'

 

He lays there silently sobbing till it gets too much and he can hear Louis as if he was lying next to him on the bed and he sits up because it aches that much. Walking down the stairs, he picks up the bottle he left there last night and drinks from it as he goes to the kitchen.

 

Hours spent walking around aimlessly, he finally ends up in front of the window again. 

 

People are living their lives outside, while his is standing still. In absence of the most important part, his has come to a halt. Nothing else matters.

 

The phone starts ringing again and he doesn’t pick up. Niall has decided to leave a message today.

 

“Harry, I know you’re there. Please pick up, we are worried. 

 

He wouldn’t want you to do this. Please. Lou would want you to live your life, to be around everyone you love. Your mum is worried too and Gemma still hasn’t stopped going around to sit outside your house after work. We are all worried, Harry. 

 

Just call me, once. Please, Hazza.” 

 

The beep of the answering machine jars him from his thoughts as he turns toward the phone. It is blinking but Harry makes no effort to go pick it up. 

 

He knows all of this already.

 

He knows that Louis would kick him in the shin for being like this, for worrying everyone. He would force Harry to get out of the house. He would bandage his hand gently and then hit him upside the hand and tell him off for being clumsy. 

 

But he’s gone.

 

So Harry sits in front of the window till it starts getting dark. He’s downed another bottle of whiskey and his mind is slowing down a little, like the pace of life outside. The street is silent now with most cars and people gone. He sees a young boy carrying a girl on his back as they chuckle and it brings another painful memory to the front of his mind.

 

‘My god Harold, your octopus tentacles are strangling me! Why did I let you convince me to give you a piggy-back ride? I hate you.’

 

He falls asleep on the window sill with a bloody sweater clutched to his chest. Another day passes.

 

***

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for writing this. I just needed an outlet. 
> 
> Said post- This gif with the quote up top: https://31.media.tumblr.com/4d45720110d42a8ef3b59b565ab6bcb1/tumblr_inline_n3e9f5whVa1syf6z4.gif


End file.
